Kudos to the Servicemembers Legal Defense Network for forcing the Bush administration into releasing documents under the Freedom Of Information Act. These documents indicate that:
- The United States Military has been engaged in undercover surveillance of students at campuses across the country, including SUNY Albany, William Paterson University, Southern Connecticut State University and UC Berkeley.
- The acts of these students which the U.S. Military felt merited surveillance? Participating in peace protests and being involved in activism regarding the Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell policy regarding gay soldiers. Apparently, peace and gay rights are threats to “national security.”
- How did the U.S. Military find out about the students’ nefarious use of free speech and free assembly rights? The TALON (Threat And Local Observation Notice) program, which among other things maintains a 1-800-CALL-SPY phone number for citizens to report on one another’s activities. Some friend or acquaintance apparently spied on and tipped off the military about these students’ record of shameless and unforgivable dissent.
(don’t believe me? download a pdf copy of the TALON reports on these activities for yourself. Thanks again, SLDN, for these documents.)
This latest round of military surveillance upon citizens for peaceful, legal and constitutionally protected activities, is an extension of a trend of military snooping that depends on the TALON program, and through the TALON program, citizens like you and me. TALON was used to spy on citizens at a protest against the government-favored Halliburton corporation. TALON was used to spy on meetings about military recruitment policy at a Florida Quaker Meeting House. Under TALON, UC Santa Cruz students protesting military recruitment were deemed “credible threats” to national security.
They tried this in East Germany, friends, and East Germany ended up as a society in which nobody trusted anybody, because your mother or brother or auntie or local barber could be reporting your thought crimes to the authorities. Now thought crimes have come to America. Just call 1-800-CALL-SPY, report on your Uncle Sid’s latest rant, and the U.S. military will take care of everything.
Yes, the unaccountable, undemocratic, classified, overreaching bureaucracy of the U.S. Military is at fault for sticking its long, probing fingers into the business of law-abiding Americans. But more troubling to me is the role of the U.S. citizenry: our friends, our family, our coworkers and our neighbors. The military would get nowhere in its efforts to spy on our completely legal activities without the help of Americans who seem to think that peaceable assembly and the questioning of authority is tantamount to treason. When America’s culture of liberty erodes, what will be left to protect and defend the the Constitution that represents the idea of America itself?
What will be left to protect us from ourselves?
